


summer country

by toujours_nigel



Category: Arthurian Mythology
Genre: Married Couple, Multi, Polyamory Negotiations, Polyshipping Day, Pre-Poly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-01
Updated: 2018-11-01
Packaged: 2019-08-14 06:52:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16487831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toujours_nigel/pseuds/toujours_nigel
Summary: “How very like you,” Guinevere laughs, “to ask for a gift that delights us all, when you were granted the boon having delighted us.”





	summer country

Arthur awakens—certain they are still travelling, still a village under canvas, even though he has lost days to this wretched wound-fever—and has his certainty shaken by the sight of his queen at his bedside, hands clasped over her belly, head drooping in uncomfortable sleep.

She wakens when he stirs, and behind her he can see the too-familiar walls of his tent. He lets his weight rest on her as she tugs him upright, too weak yet to support himself, and in some measure unheeding. Guinevere can take his weight, and the weight of Camelot, and still stand upright.

“How long,” he begins and has to stop to cough, breath coming short.

“You’ve been ill a week, my love. Lancelot wrote to me on the first night of your delirium, and the courier moved a sight faster than your camp, and I rode as fast as him, hearing news.”

He has slept through all the weary work of returning to fractured peace: seeing to the men, ensuring supplies, tending to the wounded and deciding what to do with and for any captives. Still, it is work he dislikes only less than Lancelot, and work, too, at which Gawaine excels. He will no doubt have to fight off the temptation of always assigning Gawaine post-battle duties, once he inspects his handiwork.

“No,” he tries again, tempering speech to breath and bringing out a murmur Guinevere has to lean yet closer to hear, the golden ribbons of her braid brushing his lips. “How long have you been here?”

“Only a night and a morning. Lancelot rode out to the furthest sentry-post and brought me back. Rest, Arthur, all will be well.”

 

He does, soothed by her hand in his, her voice in his ear, the delightful proximity of her: his wife so unexpectedly found in battle-camp.

When he rouses next, Lancelot is in Guinevere’s seat, working his greaves off and turning out his wrists.

“You always clasp them too tight,” Arthur croaks, and is rewarded with a careful sip of water, and Lancelot’s dire frown when he asks for wine.

“You raved three nights,” he says after a while. “You might have died from that wound or the fever it gave you.”

“In what fever did you write to Guinevere?”

“In a fever of obedience, for you called out her name and grasped my hand and would not let go. Don’t pretend at anger, you wanted her near you, she wanted to be here, and now you must only rest and recover.”

“Lance.” He says it in a tone carefully measured to pass as an affectionate admonition should his valour fail. It’s a question he rather dislikes—after a childhood with nothing to offer worth the giving, and a youth with everyone deciding anything he offered was worthwhile—but with Lancelot, it needs asking. Still, he can barely raise his voice above a whisper, and not for bodily weakness. “What do you want?”

“Do you remember,” Lancelot begins, after a long pause in which Arthur was intensely aware of being watched, “last summer, when King Lot brought some of his younger sons down and Gawaine’s age was suddenly apparent?”

“Spoken like a Gaul,” Arthur teases. “I’ve always known how old Gawaine is, every year since his birth.”

“But you can have only been six yourself,” Lancelot says, immediately distracted. “I hadn’t thought you would pay heed to the age of a stranger you were unlikely to ever meet.”

“He was born Lot’s declared and Uther’s presumed heir. Of course I always knew his age. Sir Ector used to spend his birthday casting worried glances at me and bidding his men stand guard all day. I do not know what he thought they might have done in true peril, but it was a kind thought.”

“He is a kind man. I wonder if you recollect the formations…”

“If its formations you want, you must speak to Kay,” Arthur says firmly. “ _Is_  that what you want?”

“This is pleasant country. It would be good to spend some hours in it not imperilled by war or wounds. I had hoped you might both accompany me.”

 

Planning takes its own time, even with Arthur eager and Guinevere readily acquiescent: he cannot sit without assistance, and anything more strenuous is not to be thought of. Lancelot indeed soon thinks himself selfish to have admitted to wants of his own, but the camp is pleased enough to dally after its protracted battles and forced marches, and Arthur himself—at length carried out in a litter—can well understand why Lancelot loves it so, this land he sees only at the head of an exhausted army, its makeshift village. At the height of summer with everything blooming, it is something like his own home: a reflection in shallow water, a memory.

“How very like you,” Guinevere laughs, “to ask for a gift that delights us all, when you were granted the boon having delighted us.”

In her gown of green, with a crown of flowers in her hair, she looks in truth his fairy wife, Annwn-touched and unreal. Lancelot looks at her startled when she speaks from the shadow of the beech, and looks away as though caught in some unequal struggle.

But his voice when he speaks is steady, and his smile true. “The best gifts are always thus, pleasing to all alike.”

“That is true,” Arthur says, because he will always step in to shield Lancelot, even from his wife, even from himself, “and passing wise. Like my crowning, and my marriage: gifts to please the kingdom, and yet intended only for me.”

It does the work it is meant to, Guinevere turning instantly on him with a laugh, and a cry of, “Only for you, my love, and not for me?” even as her eyes above the smile betray her knowledge of the truth.

Still, there will be time to bring Lancelot’s mysteries into the light, and it is sweeter than secrets, to lie in a pool of sunlight and have Guinevere pelt him with flowers, laughter, love.


End file.
